With winter in full blast and energy cost at an all-time high, tips to keep down heating costs are called for.

The room temperature doesn’t need to be tropic. All you need are an even 18 degrees Celsius. I usually have that temperature programmed to my heating day and night, just putting it up to 22 one hour in the morning while the boys get up. That is enough to give the feeling of a warm home. It is not necessary to run around in short sleeves, you may wear a pullover.

Close the shutters over night. Most heat is lost through windows. Once it is dark outside, you close the shutters until morning. It is amazing how much energy you save that way.

Close down rooms you don’t really need. Put the radiator on minimum but not zero and keep the shutters closed. Keep the door closed to that room as well.

If you are not moving around in the house, you feel colder than when doing something corporeal. While I sit at my computer, I have a hot water bottle under my feet, and a blanket over my knees which covers feet and bottle. If your feet are warm, you feel warmer.

Draughts are a constant problem. They tend to come in under doors and hit your feet, which makes you feel colder than necessary. Put draught stoppers in front of your doors. You can make them yourself with old cloth or bed linen. They should cover the length of the door and have a diameter of about eight centimetres to work efficiently. Fill those cloth tubes with something relatively heavy, like dried beans. You might want to use a mixture of dried beans and packaging material.

Put a hot water bottle in your bed before going to sleep to keep your feet warm. It makes you feel warmer and you will sleep better for it.

Radiators give off warmth towards the wall as well. Heating your walls is not really necessary. To deflect part of that warmth back into the room, put up aluminium foil behind the radiator. The shiny part is the more reflective surface; it should face the radiator when put up. If you have enough space between radiator and wall, you might want to stick the foil onto thick cardboard and put the cardboard onto the wall. Thick cardboard contains a lot of air and is a good insulation material. You might use polystyrene for insulation as well.

If you have windows that are never opened and not really needed for anything, you might put bubbly wrap up over the whole window embrasure. Bubbly wrap insulates quite well, and having some distance between glass and wrap makes it work almost like a double glazing.

You may also insulate your outside walls from the inside. Cork, cardboard, or polystyrene serve very well as insulation material.

You might want to go one step further on my hot water bottle. Instead of a hot water bottle, use cherry pips in a cushion. You can warm them on any stove or on the hearth after cooking. They keep warmth very well and always remind you of summer.

If you don’t have any dried cherry pips, it’s something to look forward to. Just remember to collect them for cleaning and drying next summer. Saving on heating costs becomes a year round concern like that, and a very tasty one at that.